The creature rampaged, pain and insanity propelling it in great fits across the ground, its claws tearing through its fellows as they lay dying. Sam teleported in, bringing his hammer down upon the beast’s left foreleg, into a knee joint that protruded slightly forwards. The front of the joint was blasted apart, its scales fracturing. A screech of rage blasted out of the beast’s mouth, driving Sam backwards with physical force. However, he easily avoided the next strike from the beast, letting it hammer into the ground. As he circled the failed dragon, Sam realized something. It’s completely blind. Something that level should be able to aim easily enough, but all of its attacks are way off the mark. Suddenly, that level 249 isn’t looking so scary…

  The monster was literally falling apart before Sam’s eyes, and he could have probably stood there, waiting for it to die. That wasn’t in the cards for him though, and he instead loosed the ray of pure energy that had been coalescing in his hammer, straight at the beast’s head.

  The vacuum split before his Primal skill, and the asteroid crumbled apart, vaporized by the force. The normal range of the skill was measured in the dozens of miles, and that was barely the size of the asteroid’s entirety. An entire half vanished into the ether, while the other was blown apart into tiny chunks, drifting off into the void.

  The dragon remained in place, its skin missing, blackened flesh revealed beneath. A hole was visible, running down the center of its body. Still it stood, and glared at Sam, gibberish cascading out of its mouth as all rational thought left its mind.

  At this point, it seemed like a mercy to kill the beast, and Sam moved forward, only to feel his hair standing on end. The monster was doing something, and as the void split, veins of bloody crimson spread across, Sam teleported a hundred miles away, just as the creature detonated. A wash of power spread across the space, everything in its path evaporating. Sam was buffeted by the force, but at his distance, it was mostly gone, and he simply let it turn him, even as a wave of essence followed it, entering his body. It was less than he had expected, not even enough for a level. Though, to be fair, the creature had done a lot of the work in killing itself.

  You have completed the Desolation Belt: Layer 5! (Challenge Mode)

  Sam pushed aside the now familiar title upgrade. It wasn’t like it changed, except after every ten layers. Instead, he opened his next quest.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  You have entered Floor 6 of the Desolation Belt(Challenge Mode)

  Abrinadus’ touch is evident across the entire asteroid belt, with remnants of his millennium spanning quest for immortality before his due everywhere. You have slain a nest of his twisted remnants, but many more remain, and some are far more dangerous than others. Ten thousand years of experimentation has birthed thousands of the sad, bloated sacks of flesh that you found, but there are a few true monsters here and there. Clear out another three Draconic Crypts, while searching for more information about Abrinadus.

  Completion: 0/3

  Rewards: Title Upgrade

  It was simple, and straightforward, less complicated than the quest of the Grand Arena layer. Though, most of the quests in the Tower were like that, as they were meant to test strength, directly or not. Even the quests that revolved around exploration always had some sort of fight in them.

  With nothing better to do than continue his search, Sam flitted off into the Desolation Belt, scanning as many asteroids as he could with Worldsense. This floor was set to be the longest yet…

  ***

  Sam found two more crypts within the next week, each almost a carbon copy of the previous, with a guardian remaining in lonely vigil over the failed dragons. After his experience with the first asteroid crypt, Sam simply obliterated the golems with a single blast of his Primal skill after a few exchanged blows, preventing the remnants from awakening any of the dragons. Doing so had brought his Weapon Mastery up by a stage, now only a few away from upgrading. Although the rate of progression was painfully slow, compared to the rest of his gains, it made sense given that Weapon Mastery was a product of time, rather than strength.

  Finding the third crypt had been a more harrowing endeavor, drawing him into an interstellar storm of razor sharp dust, orbiting a tiny gravitational anomaly. It felt like stinging sand through the gaps in his armor, but had he been weaker, it would have torn his skin off. Indeed, a few corpses drifted in the dark, their bones being slowly worn away by the onslaught. The cloud was immense, millions of miles in diameter. At its outer edges, a trio of massive asteroids orbited, hundreds of miles across. Still lumpen and misshapen, they were not true planets, but something close.

  Two of them were clearly empty, as great scars criss crossed their forms, looking disconcertingly like the slashes of a sword. Though, Sam could hardly consider himself surprised at this point, given that he was capable of similar levels of destruction. The only difference was that the strikes contained no Dao energy, meaning that they had come from raw strength and skill alone.